Last time on The Overton Window, Noah got drugged by his quasi-girlfriend and her revolutionary pals. But enough about that, lets check in with Agent Kearns and Danny Bailey, who are planning a sting operation against some all-American militiamen.

Note: It’s another guest post. It’s still horror-related. We now have ten days to October, aka the Devil’s Month, so this is an appropriate topic for me to keep writing about. Just take my word for it.

I’m normally not the kind of person who consumes different versions of the same story in quick succession. I actually rarely do it at all - if I watch a movie I’ll almost never read the novel it was based on and I tend to choose between an original manga or an anime and then just stick solely with that. There’s no particular reason for this beyond, I guess, having no real need or desire to experience the same story twice.

But I recently picked up Adam Nevill’s The Ritual, a 2011 horror novel that I understand won its author some decent acclaim when it was first released. Just before I started reading it, I happened to notice that there exists a moderately well-reviewed horror movie of the same name that was released last year; wouldn’t you know it, the movie is an adaptation of the novel. Just for a change I decided to read the book and then immediately watch the movie, thinking it might make a good exercise in compare-and-contrast.

NOTE: This is a guest post by a friend of The Blogger. There will most likely be more of these, probably on the subject of horror. Think of them as a nice lead-in to the annual Spooktober tradition.

Quite some time ago I attempted to read Stephen King’s IT while working at one of those jobs that are so boring they should by all rights be illegal. The book proved to be a good choice; at this stage in my development as a reader I wasn’t yet tired of King’s fondness for stuffing massive amounts of character backstory into all of his novels, so I had a perfectly fine time reading about the inhabitants of Derry, Maine (of course) in their child and adult forms even before the evil clown showed up.

We're back from our hiatus! Unfortunately, posting will still resume on a slower schedule, as I'm experiencing new and exciting Brain Symptoms. I'm planning on tidying up some choice pieces of content from my old site and bringing them over, so that will hopefully plug up the gaps.

In case you've forgotten what's going on in The Overton Window, here's a recap: Noah Gardner, rich young PR executive, has entered the orbit of Molly Ross, a member of the goofily-named Founders Keepers, a "patriot" group convinced that America is sliding towards tyranny. Noah actually knows for a fact that this is the case because he was in the room when his dad offered to help some government employees enact a plan that will end with a new world order taking over the country, but he doesn't seem to have processed this for some reason. When we last left them, they were sneaking into Noah's company to look for evidence of the plot at Molly's urging.

Meanwhile, Danny Bailey, another Trapper Keeper and Youtube sensation, has been recruited by an FBI agent named Stuart Kearns, ostensibly to participate in a sting operation looking to arrest militia members who might be plotting nefarious deeds. In reality, Kearns is working with the evil conspiracy and is duping both Danny and the militia chuds into carrying out a real terrorist attack in order to create a pretext for the new world order plot (this hasn't actually been revealed yet in the part of the book we've covered, but it's incredibly obvious).

Programming note: updates will be less frequent for the forseeable future, due to Brain Problems

As chapter fifteen opens, Noah brings Molly to his fancy rich-guy apartment, humble-bragging about how he lives near the Met and all the big embassies because he's such a mister fancy pants. It feels like approximately a month in real time since anything interesting has happened.

Last chapter, Noah sat by quietly while his dad went on a maniacal (and very long) rant about how he's going to help a cabal of government officials seize power and reshape the country to their liking.

You would expect his reaction to this to be something like "Holy shit my dad has lost his god damn mind, Jesus Christ what the fuck I've got to tell someone about this", followed by a bout of hyper-ventilating and hysterical crying. Instead, he just seems vaguely confused and ill at ease.

Note: I'm changing the way I do excerpts from now on, because Squarespace's quote function is awful. Let me know if it's difficult to read or causes any problems.

Chapter 3 opens on a fake document from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, called "“Constitutionalists,” Extremism, the Militia Movement, and the Growing Threat of Domestic Terrorism." But it's totally actually about keeping good, red-blooded, freedom-loving American patriots from resisting Woodrow Wilson's evil plan.

It's once again the most videogamingest time of year, and the big pre-show press conferences have concluded. We saw new games and already-announced games, we saw an awkward white guy in sandals play a flute for what felt like an hour, and most importantly, one intrepid field journalist embarked on a mission to make E3 the gayest gaming show of all time.

It was a journey for that most elusive of beasts: gay, on stage. You might almost say it was #GayOnStage.

Picture this: an underground bunker, stuffed full of military-grade weaponry and bedecked with American flags. A middle-aged man with a beard sits at a table, pouring over maps. Red lines and circles criss-cross the maps; targets, avenues of attack. A radio mutters quietly in the corner.

How do you react to this scene? What kind of emotion does it instill? Fear? Uneasiness? Is the idea unsettling? Or do you identify with the bearded man and his bunker? Does this image fill you with patriotic fervor and resolve?

If your answer is “Who cares, let’s go WRECK SOME SHIT DAWG HELL YEAH” then congratulations on your new role as a Ubisoft employee.

The first trailer for Battlefield 5 (or V) released yesterday. In case you're not familiar with the series, it's considered to be the somewhat more complex, "realistic" counterpart to the Call of Duty games, emphasizing team and squad-based tactics over personal glory. The last installment in the series, Battlefield 1, went back to WWI. The sequel (Battlefield 5, are you confused yet?) is set in WWII, that conflict which is famously under-represented in video-game shooters.

Cue the trailer, which features four outlandishly-dressed super-soldiers leaping through windows, getting shot multiple times without apparent injury, blowing up a plane with an enemy grenade, and other ludicrous acts of cartoon violence. At the end, a British women with a Furiosa-style prosthetic arm clubs a Nazi to death with a cricket bat wrapped in barbed wire.